


This Ain't No Disco

by wearemany



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Los Angeles Kings, M/M, Philadelphia Flyers, Reunited and It Feels So Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:28:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearemany/pseuds/wearemany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"You'll do anything you can not to have that feeling again,” Richards said.</i>
</p><p>After the trades, before the Cup. But also before all that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Ain't No Disco

**Author's Note:**

> Most of this is Gigantic’s fault. Any mistakes are mine.

  
_This ain’t no disco_   
_Ain’t no country club either_   
_This is L.A._   
  


Jeff is as agreeable as ever his first morning in L.A., waiting for Mike at the hotel valet with his long arms dangling at his sides, half a dumb grin on his face that stretches wide as he recognizes Mike’s car.

Mike doesn’t even turn off the engine. He shoos off the valet trying to get at his keys, and Jeff climbs into the passenger seat like he has a thousand times before.

Jeff pushes his sunglasses up on his head, immediately wincing at the glare that cuts through even the darkest tinted windows.

“Hey,” he says, and Mike nods back. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

Mike could’ve texted his address and assumed Jeff would find a cab there or to the training center on his own. He could have gone to LAX last night and stood around at baggage claim double-checking the monitors. He could’ve walked right into a backslapping bear hug, Jeff’s t-shirt riding up around the points of his shoulders as he wrapped himself around Mike.

This seemed the better plan.

Mike pulls out of the hotel driveway. Jeff flips his sunglasses back down. “Is it always this bright here?” he asks.

It’s a mild, easy question, not a complaint, and Mike grunts something that should sound like _yes_ to anyone who’s known him ten minutes, let alone ten years.

“Yeah,” Jeff says. “I’m gonna have to find something with—” He waves his hand around. “Something darker, I guess.”

He smiles at Mike, then turns to looks out the window, still smiling. Mike shoots through the first kiss of a red light and up onto the freeway ramp.

+

Mike doesn’t have to be available for media every game, not unless he’s specifically asked. He gets fewer emails from his agent, goes a whole week once without being asked for an autograph. In L.A., the real TMZ is too busy with real celebrities, or on a slow day maybe the Lakers, to give a shit what bar he had a few beers at on any given afternoon.

Even the beat writers are different out here, less cynical, resigned to being the underdogs at their own outlets. But at the end of the day they’re still reporters. They still love you on a streak and crucify you the minute you stumble. He doesn’t have to be captain to get caught in the crossfire.

One writer who’s always been pretty straight with him grabs his arm, asks nicely if she can have a minute. Then she asks whether his new roommate has moved in yet.

“Just getting settled,” he says. It’s almost true. He hates talking about anything but hockey, but he’s the one who went and tweeted about it.

“You and Jeff Carter played 60 games apart this year, not counting injuries,” she says. “How hard is it to get back into the groove together?”

“You’re the one doing the math,” he says. “I didn’t really keep track.” There was nothing to count down to anyway, no alternate ending in sight.

He never would have known he’d gotten his fiftieth point, or his hundredth, if some number cruncher hadn’t told him in the scrum. Dropping stats like it meant they understood, like it made any sense of the game they’d played against each other in Columbus last month, Carts swinging through his peripheral vision on a shift change like a lucid dream. Like any number meant more than how Carts would crush him up against the boards after they set up and delivered the perfect one-two punch of an assist and game-winning goal.

Once, back in Philly, knee deep into a night of neck-high drinking, Jeff leaned close and shouted in Mike’s ear, “Richards to Carter, Carter scores!” He punctuated it with the breathless roar of a crowd’s applause, leaving a wake of goosebumps clear down Mike’s spine. “It’s my favorite thing they ever say about us,” Jeff said.

Even at his most drunk and argumentative, Mike couldn’t argue that. Later, well past his most drunk and pathetic, he waited until the dark bedroom was perfectly quiet and Jeff was asleep to touch his face and whisper it back.

The reporter shifts the angle of her digital recorder and says, “Being on the same line again—how much of an adjustment is it to get you two back to where it feels totally normal?”

At training camp with the Kings, Drew showed him a whole set of Mike’s assists setting up Jeff’s goals. “The Richards and Carter special,” he called it, highlight after highlight all edited together on YouTube. “I’d catch anything you threw my way,” Dewey offered, in that weird, squeaky way he had of making everything sound as unsexy as possible. “I’m not as pretty but I can get it in, I’ll totally get it in for you.”

Mike tells the reporter, “It’ll come.”

Jeff’s just finishing up in the dressing room when Mike gets back. A win’s a win whether they scored themselves or not, especially after such a shitty road run and four losses in a row. Brownie’s hat trick and a shut-out for the Blackhawks is even better, and he can tell Jeff’s happy and loose with it .

His suit’s the same, a heavy pinstriped wool that Mike remembers helping pick out on a wet, wickedly cold winter day. Mike had to buy a whole new wardrobe for home games here, all soft, lightweight shirts and jackets he only wears to and from the car.

Mike puts a hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “Let’s go get your stuff.”

+

He’s been away more than he’s been home this month. Long enough to run out of almost everything he needs on the road, let alone what he might want when they get back.

Jeff’s stuff so far consists of two garment bags and two duffels that don’t make a visible dent in the guest room. “All I brought was what I already had packed,” he says when Mike asks if he needs anything, so they hit the drugstore and the dry cleaners and eat Arnold’s weight in sushi for an early lunch.

On the way back out to the parking lot, Mike notices an ashy smear across Jeff’s t-shirt. He drags a thumb down the driver side door, testing how deep the grime goes.

“One more errand,” he says as they buckle up. He doesn’t have to worry about rust nipping at the trade-in value of a lease but if he skips a week at the car wash he ends up dancing around the edges of his garage trying to avoid fucking up his suit with all the accumulated smog.

“Sure,” Jeff says, like Mike could take him anywhere and it would be okay.

They’re pretty quiet in the queue for the car wash, just like they have been all day. It doesn’t feel awful. He aims his tires into the tracks and double-checks all the windows are closed tight.

Penner gives him so much shit for never bothering with a full detail job, especially given he can have it done at the Staples garage during a game if he wants. But Mike doesn’t have a fancy Mercedes. He has a cordless dustbuster and a dog who sheds all over his Range Rover, and that plus fifteen bucks does him just fine.

Blue and pink soap splatter down on the windshield and then the front seat gets dark as the giant brushes swish back and forth. Usually he does this alone, or with Arnold, and it’s just a soothing, calm cocoon. With Jeff there it’s more intimate, almost obscene in a way that he should be able to find silly but he can’t quite manage being that cool.

He knows he hasn’t been capable of giving a straight answer about what it means to play with Jeff again, not to reporters or teammates. His dad called when the news broke and said congratulations, as if Mike had anything to do with it, and also, “Every once in blue moon you get a lucky break,” which was the most Mike had ever heard his dad attribute a good outcome to anything other than hard work. Darryl just mumbled something like, “This’ll be good,” before patting them both on the ass and sending them out out to warm-ups.

Mike could handle watching Jeff play in Columbus, when Jeff stayed off the IR long enough to play. And he could handle quick texts and calls about nothing, just the regular bullshit patter of breaking down a bad beat or an epic save or what tweaks they’d made to their workouts to accommodate whichever body parts were creakiest that week. They did all the family updates. Stories from back home. Dumb movies they’d seen in hotels.

All of that was fine when he didn’t have Jeff’s fucking face right there, too.

The car gets shoved forward under the dryers, droplets getting chased up the windshield only to evaporate halfway to the roof. It’s so loud he doesn’t notice at first that Jeff is laughing, a wheezing whine that usually only comes out when they’re really, really stoned.

“What?” Mike yells, and Jeff just shakes his head, wiping his eyes and settling into an occasional giggle.

Mike doesn’t really need to ask. He gets it. All of this, them back together in California of all places, playing out the rest of the contracts they fought so hard for back in Philly. There’s nothing to do but laugh at how things turned out.

Mike catches the toothy edge of his own smile in the side mirror. He hasn’t felt this relaxed since Lombardi took him aside last week to say there was one trade rumor that might be true, one that _could_ be true, assuming Mike was okay with it. Everyone assumed Mike was okay with it.

It’s a quiet revelation but it feels solid and true: It won't be like it was before but it's not going to kill him.

+

The morning after coming back from Minnesota, Mike wakes up early. He’s buckling Arnold’s collar and mumbling to him about the weather when he realizes Jeff’s leaning against the kitchen door, smiling down at them. Mike holds the door open until Jeff gets his shoes on. Arnold knows the way to the beach.

For three, maybe four months after Mike moved to L.A., the first emotion he felt every day was relief. Then guilt. Then failure.

Then he got out of bed, took Arnold out and got the fuck over himself. The ocean, the water, the horizon—it was all way fucking bigger than him and the mess he’d made back there. Bigger than spending the next decade with a good group of guys who asked for so little that all he wanted was to give them more.

Bigger than the fact that he was so relieved, at least for awhile, not to have to look at Jeff every day and wonder what wasn’t working, what Mike was missing to make it all work. He wasn’t good at very many things, but he wasn’t used to failing when he was. For so fucking long he’d been sure Jeff was one of the few things he was good at. Could be great at, maybe.

But nothing Mike did that year managed to fix whatever had gone wrong between them and the Flyers. Every move they made, on or off the ice, got torn apart and twisted into something terrible. Every time they stayed in, sequestering themselves from the constant questions of the world at large, they did fine as long as they didn’t get out of bed, didn’t talk about how hard it was to keep their heads in the game when the game felt squirrely and suspect.

And then it didn’t matter anyway. They were done. Gone. Casualties of the salary cap, business as usual, damaged goods. Whatever it was called all it meant was everything was over. A couple days in Philly wrapping up loose ends. A long weekend up on Mike’s lake that they’d planned months before with friends-of-friends who floated between them like buoys, buffers for their awkward assurances that they could both handle getting the raw end of a bad deal.

It was over, which was apparently Jeff’s excuse for hooking up with a waitress who worked at the marina on his last night in Kenora, and Mike’s excuse for pretending he didn’t give a shit.

Arnold lumbers back and forth along the beach, mostly disinterested in other dogs or joggers. Mike and Jeff stand side by side, watching a small boat with a bright yellow sail inch its way up the coast. There’s a flock of surfers floating in a ragged line, waiting for a wave.

“You’re happy here,” Jeff says, and Mike’s not going to apologize for that any more than he was going to write his name on some power-drunk coach’s stupid sobriety pledge. But Jeff just bumps his shoulder against Mike’s and says, “I can see why you like it.”

Jeff grins down into the curve of black cotton where the hood of his new Kings sweatshirt is bunched up around his neck.

“I don’t know why you’re always smiling,” Mike says, staring down at the sand. He needs coffee and a hot shower far away from the damp marine layer and the fairly overwhelming urge to taste Jeff’s skin again. “You’re so fucking happy.”

Jeff laughs loud, rocking back on his heels. “No one’s accused me of that in a while.”

Mike grabs Jeff’s sleeve and kisses him.

“Yeah,” Jeff says, after a minute, after it occurs to Mike that they may be in L.A. but they’re on a goddamned public beach and he’s never even kissed Jeff outside before. “Yeah, I am happy.”

The last time he’d seen Jeff look so sure of it was in Philly, the night Jeff and the Flyers agreed to terms on his extension. Jeff had stood up and answered the phone, stepped over Mike’s legs where they were propped up on the coffee table. Mike turned the sound down low on the TV but didn’t turn it off.

Through months and months of negotiations with Holmgren, Jeff had tried to stay calm, stay out of it, let Rick do his job and get the best deal. The best deal possible, anyway, after a great deal was eaten away by hometown concessions and empty backhanded compliments.

Mike was less patient. Mike was pretty pissed. Jeff’s deal was three years late and looking to be a couple million dollars short.

Jeff paced behind the couch. “Okay,” he said, and “yeah,” and “I understand.” Then he changed direction, blocking Mike’s view of the TV. He said, “Okay, thanks,” and hung up.

Mike said, “Is it done?” Jeff nodded. “And?”

“Eleven years. Fifty-eight million.”

That wasn’t bad. Not what Jeff deserved but better than it could have been. “And you said yes?” he checked.

“Yeah,” Jeff said. “It’s good. It’s done.”

Mike’s breath caught hard, like a slapshot right to the center of his chest plate, plastic edges cutting into his skin. “Holy shit,” he said, and Jeff echoed it back. “Holy shit!” Mike yelled, and almost broke his fucking legs trying to get around the coffee table to hug Jeff.

“They’re announcing tomorrow,” Jeff said.

“Well, go get your party clothes on,” Mike said. “Where do you want to go?” And then, again, “Holy shit, seriously,” because if it was done Mike could admit he hadn’t been sure it would be, that every day he’d gotten a little more annoyed and a lot more worried that the team Jeff loved so fucking much couldn’t just lock this down.

Jeff grinned but said, “I don’t want to go out,” which made no sense because they went out all the time for no reason whatsoever and this was it, this was the biggest reason Mike could think of to do anything they wanted, anywhere they wanted in their whole city.

“A nice dinner,” he insisted. They could eat huge fucking steaks and drink champagne out of glasses like grownups. Toast to the next decade of playing together and winning together, to a whole career spent together in the same colors in the same town.

“Not tonight,” Jeff said. “Let’s just…” He squeezed Mike’s arms. They were standing so close still that Mike felt Jeff’s heart slamming against his skin. Or maybe that was his own heart going double time, his skin that itched and ached whenever Jeff was near.

That—they’d circled around that for a long, long time. But in the last year, the last few months, it felt like they had gotten closer. Tiny turns brushing up against something bigger. Long pauses and longer staring contests, silences that stretched out in a quivering, queasy way. It wasn’t wrong but it also wasn’t ever enough.

“We can just drink here,” Mike said, because they had to celebrate somehow. He shrugged out of Jeff’s hold.

There was a six-shot caddy on his bar, a souvenir they stole from a rented beach house in AC. Mike opened a bottle at random and slopped some into each glass. He handed one to Jeff and knocked his own back right away.

Tequila. Fine. He did a second shot and held another one out to Jeff.

“Mike—”

“C’mon, we’re celebrating,” Mike said, his throat raw. “Congratulations. You did it.”

Jeff swallowed the drinks down back to back, blinking hard as he set the glasses on the bar. “We did it,” he said. “You and me—”

It felt like that frozen moment when the fatigue and the injuries and the frustration of a hard-fought game or a seemingly endless series faded away and all that was left was adrenaline and pure, perfect, delirious joy.

“We won,” Mike said, and they hadn’t really, they still had to win the Cup together, win it more than once. But Jeff nodded, slung an arm around Mike’s shoulders like they could look up into the stands and hear thousands of people cheering them on.

Jeff was warm, his biceps brushing against Mike’s neck. Mike turned his nose down into Jeff’s chest, brought his arms up into a crushing embrace, squeezing just as strong as he would with gear between them. But there wasn’t any gear in the way. Just t-shirts and jeans and they weren’t even wearing shoes and socks because the heat in Mike’s apartment always inched up on the high side.

He touched Jeff’s back, then the outside of his upper arm, then traced the taut skin across Jeff’s collarbone where it peeked out from beneath the collar of his shirt. Jeff slid one hand down Mike’s spine, hard and deliberate, and Mike bit down on Jeff’s clavicle until Jeff groaned. Mike pushed and pulled them around until he could get a hand on Jeff’s cock through his jeans, and Jeff grunted and pulled away.

Mike blinked through his confusion, reaching out again.

“You have a bed,” Jeff said, and his tone was reasonable and his words made sense but Mike still just stared at him, stupid with having gotten exactly what he’d wanted for so long.

Jeff took him by the elbow, pointed him down the hall.

“Come on,” he said, and so Mike went.

Mike leans up to kiss Jeff again, because fuck anybody on this beach who bothers looking at them.

He holds Jeff’s stubbly jaw with one hand, keeping him close. “I’ve been pretty miserable actually,” he admits into the soft skin behind Jeff’s ear, because he’s not sure Jeff’s right, he’s not sure whether what he’s feeling now is good or just better than being alone.

This part he knows, though. “Come on,” he says, and Arnold herds them back up towards the house.

+

The dog pads into the kitchen, tracking tiny bits of grit with him across the wood floors and then loudly drinking water. Jeff stands just inside the front door until Mike walks past him and up the stairs, catching Jeff’s sweatshirt between his fingers and tugging him along.

In Mike’s bedroom, the curtains are all open, the blankets rumpled. An hour ago he was annoyed at being awake and now he has this, Jeff waiting around like there’s any chance Mike won’t go through with it.

Mike shoves Jeff’s hoodie up his stomach, hands brushing through chest hair because Jeff doesn’t even have the decency to wear a goddamned shirt underneath. He kisses Jeff hard, with enough momentum to carry them back to the edge of the mattress where Mike can yank Jeff’s sweatshirt up and push him down onto the bed all at once.

Jeff scoots back, dragging off his pants and boxers, leaning naked against the headboard before Mike has even gotten started.

“You out of practice?” Jeff asks, and Mike says no before really thinking it through. But it's the truth. He’s gotten himself laid more than occasionally since he’s been in L.A. And at least he waited until Jeff was out of sight.

“I’m sure you did just fine," he says, "even in Columbus.”

“Mike,” Jeff says, and it's probably for the best that Jeff’s clearly not interested in an argument, not right now. He slouches into Mike’s pillows, stretching out his neck. “Get up here.”

The first time Jeff ever went down on him, Mike could barely breathe after. “The fuck did you learn how to do that?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Jeff said, cautious. “You haven’t?”

“No,” Mike said. If he’d been half as confident at his ability to take Jeff apart, he would have gone for it immediately. “I mean, juniors, but not -- not like that. Just fooling around.”

Juniors was getting each other off in shitty dorm rooms or billet basements or on the back of a bus under a heavy blanket. He literally couldn’t remember most of those boys’ names, wasn’t sure if he played against them later in the NHL. He figured it didn’t count if he didn’t remember.

“And—you,” Mike added. “That one time.”

They were 17, maybe 18. Jeff went home with Mike on a break, just an excuse to get away, see a different part of the country. Mike’s parents threw a party and the two of them holed up in Mike’s old bedroom.

Mike’s not sure he ever knew how it started, probably a couple beers and leftover hormones revved up from a day on the lake looking at girls in tiny bikinis.

But he remembered exactly how Jeff sat on the edge of Mike’s twin bed, shorts open, polo shirt pushed up into his armpits. Mike was behind him, up on his knees in just his swim trunks, wrapped around Jeff’s back. Pressed close as he reached around and jerked Jeff off.

And then Mike’s dad walked in, paused in the open doorway for a second and then said, “Sorry,” and walked back out.

Mike froze, a shocked, hysterical giggle burning in his throat that he knew better than to let out. But he didn’t loosen his grip right away and when he shifted his weight to keep from falling off the bed, Jeff gasped and came all over Mike’s hand. Mike was still hard against Jeff’s back, trunks tight and a little damp. He pulled away, went to the bathroom, closed his eyes and counted to a hundred over and over until he’d calmed down enough to go back out. He didn't get himself off.

They never talked about it, not once.

Jeff chewed on his swollen bottom lip and said, “Sometimes I thought I dreamed that.”

In Mike’s dreams only the ending changed. After Jeff came, he would turn around and push Mike back on the bed and jerk him off, or go down on him, or kiss him and rub up against him. He only dreamed about the kissing on particularly shitty days when he didn’t even pretend to fall asleep first.

“Wait—so you’ve done this—what, a lot?” he asked Jeff. They picked up a lot of girls together, a lot of ladies eager to prove they were up for anything, and Mike still wasn’t sure he’d ever come so close to losing consciousness just from getting his dick sucked.

“Not a lot,” Jeff said. “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes when? Where?”

“The shore, mostly. Just—sometimes somebody would, you know. Come up to me.”

“Guys hit on you?”

Jeff sat up, shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

“I don’t remember any guys hitting on you.”

“That’s because they don’t when you’re there.”

“Oh,” Mike said. He pushed back with his heels until he could sit propped against the headboard. “But you usually tell me when you hook up.” He swallowed and tried to figure how else to say it. “You could have told me.” He could. Mike wasn’t sure how he would have taken it—he wasn’t sure how he was taking it right then, honestly, but it’s not like he would’ve been a total asshole.

“I know,” Jeff said. “It was just—weird.” Mike nodded, and Jeff said, “Weird that it wasn’t you, I mean.”

Mike ignores the way Jeff is trying to grab him by the shoulders to pull him up the bed. He kisses the curve of Jeff’s calf, the inside of his knee. Jeff’s legs fall open and Mike bites at the crease of his groin where the skin is bare and smooth. Jeff groans and pushes his shoulders deeper into Mike’s pillows. “Me first,” Jeff insists, voice low and hungry, and Mike strips off his sweats and moves up the bed, impatient now, desperate to climb onto Jeff’s chest.

Jeff tilts his chin up and takes Mike’s cock in, sucking just a little, stroking with one hand and getting him all the way hard. Mike fumbles to brace himself against the headboard. He hasn’t gotten laid like this in L.A., nowhere close, nothing like how Jeff knows exactly how to make him feel fucking insane for it. Jeff holds his waist, then slides his hand down to help lift Mike’s ass up, taking his weight, letting Mike fuck his face a few times.

If it was anybody but Jeff—if it was anybody but Jeff, Mike would never be in this position, sure. But because it’s Jeff, because the guy has arms a mile long and could probably lift Mike’s car over his head, Mike doesn't have anything to think about except how he feels shaky and hot all over, dizzy and dumb.

Mike thrusts down into Jeff’s throat once and Jeff lets him get away with it with just a smack on his hip. The second time Jeff pulls back, spit on his chin and still holding Mike up above his chest, and says, “You want to come like this?”

Jeff’s taunting him, maybe, testing him, but he's not teasing. He’ll usually let Mike have it any way he wants.

Mike just groans, hangs his shoulders over the headboard and tries to choke in a breath, swallowing wetly around Jeff’s name. Jeff pushes himself up, wrestles Mike down his torso until Mike’s straddling Jeff’s hips, his face shoved in Jeff’s sweaty neck as he rubs his cock against Jeff’s stomach.

“Fuck me like this,” Jeff suggests, his mouth hot next to Mike’s ear, and Mike says yes, fucking yes, like he could think of any other answer.

Jeff slows Mike’s rocking with a steady hand on his flank. “You have stuff?” he prompts, but Mike must look as incoherent as he feels because Jeff says it again, a finger on Mike’s chin to hold his eyes.

Mike puts one hand flat on the bedspread and slowly leverages himself up onto his knees. “Maybe,” he says with a laugh. He nearly falls on his face trying to climb off the bed and Jeff chuckles, low and fond and familiar.

Mike knocks his toothpaste on the bathroom floor, stubs one toe painfully on a drawer as he digs through looking for lube. He finds a half-empty bottle in the bottom of his big Dopp kit, the one he only takes on long trips or summers home, and there are condoms in the nightstand.

Jeff has kicked all the covers off the foot of the bed. His legs are splayed wide, one heel angled into the mattress so his hips jut forward, and Mike tackles him back into the pillows. He gets a hand around Jeff’s shoulder and goes to flip him over but Jeff fights it, hooks Mike around the knees and pulls him close. “Like this,” he says, not really a suggestion this time or even a question, and reaches for the condom.

Mike usually fucked Jeff from behind. They tried it other ways, too, with Jeff on top, or Mike on top with Jeff inside him, and it was good but it wasn’t as good. They barely knew what they were doing when they started, but they were athletes, after all. They knew how to move their bodies, how to make them bend and twist and push through pain until the endorphins kicked in. He liked having Jeff’s long body stretched out beneath him, and he also liked knowing that he could get through it without having to shut his eyes, overwhelmed by Jeff’s face right there the whole time.

Instead he could lean close to sneak a look, or wait for Jeff to turn his head and rest one cheek on his forearm, holding on for the moment when Jeff’s loose, lust-soaked slackness sharpened into wide ecstasy. Mike had never slept with anybody who grew so specifically happy instead of just plain stupid the closer they got to coming.

Like this, face to face like Jeff wants, Mike can see how Jeff bites his lip as Mike pushes in. He slows down a little but he doesn’t stop, because that was always their rule. Time outs are allowed but there's no holding back. Figuring out the rules for how they fucked was always easier than talking about what any of it actually meant.

It’s been long enough—fuck, almost as long since they last did this as the six or seven months they spent fooling around back in Philly—that Mike has the embarrassing urge to slow it down now, savor it. Instead he grips Jeff’s cock harder and speeds up. He never thought they would do this again and they are, so there’s no point in speculating whether this time will be the last.

Jeff’s mouth hangs open and his knees come up a little, bracketing Mike between them, pushing his ass back onto Mike with every thrust. And then it happens just like it always did, a sudden smile breaking across Jeff’s face like the crest of a wave. His head rolls back, too, neck arcing up as he gasps, coming hard. “Oh fuck,” he says, eyes slipping shut just for a second before he grabs at Mike’s slick back, egging him on, holding him tighter. He stares up at Mike, eyes crinkled and lips curved, and Mike comes.

+

When Mike wakes again it feels like early afternoon, late winter light at a low angle across his legs. The comforter is bunched up in the middle of the bed. Jeff must have pulled it up to cover them after Mike crashed out, and then they both shrugged it off as the room grew warmer.

For a good long minute, Mike doesn’t feel like a failure. They’ve won two out of three, including the shutout against the Wild. A three-way tie for eighth won’t mean shit if they can’t keep it up, but it seems like maybe, maybe, the tide has turned.

He’s lying in bed thinking about hockey instead of Jeff, which would feel more like progress if his room didn’t reek of sex, if his pillows didn’t all somehow smell like Jeff’s hair. This isn’t the dumbest thing he’s ever done, probably, but it definitely isn’t the smartest.

A shower can’t make anything worse at this point, and when he’s clean and dressed again the house mostly smells like food Mike didn’t know he had, which means either Jeff went digging through the cupboards or took Mike’s car to Whole Foods.

He comes down the stairs and Jeff is stirring something in a saucepan Mike doesn’t think he’s ever seen before while simultaneously leaning down to talk to Arnold very seriously about why he’s not allowed to eat chicken bones.

It’s Arnold who gives him away, and Jeff straightens up with a sheepish smirk.

Mike crouches down to rub Arnold’s ears. “Hey,” he manages.

“Welcome back,” Jeff says. He gestures at the stove. “I’m making a potato egg thing?”

“Sounds good,” Mike says, and goes to get out plates. He has to back up against the counter to make room for Jeff to open the oven, sliding the pan inside.

“It cooks for twenty more minutes,” Jeff says, “so I’m gonna hop in the shower.” He leans in a little, maybe like he’s going to kiss Mike on his way out of the room, but in the end it’s just a tiny check against Mike’s shoulder as he passes.

Mike breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth, and some time after he hears the water start running his pulse gets back around normal.

Breakfast is normal except how excited Jeff is about the avocados he bought. “Figured I’d stock up,” he says, “since we’re home for a week straight.”

In Philly those last few months, they slept together but they didn’t live together. If Jeff was still awake to say goodbye to, sometimes Mike didn’t even stay the night. He never crept out like a douchebag, but they’d spent almost every day together long before they started having sex. They didn’t have to get weird about everything just because Mike knew how Jeff sounded when he begged to get fucked.

“I’ll clean up,” he says, grabbing Arnold’s leash and out the door before Jeff can respond. He took a hat but not any sunglasses so he’s fucking blind, following the dog and almost tripping over a crack in the sidewalk. He’s being an asshole and he knows why, he knows he’s just working himself up like he’s out on the ice seeing red instead of playing smart. Not that any fucking coach would know what say to him right now.

He does the dishes while Jeff watches TV. Browses websites with boat accessories while Jeff does a load of laundry. Watches TV while Jeff pokes at something on his phone.

Around five, Jeff stretches his arms along the back of the couch, almost brushing Mike’s neck even though he’s sitting on the other end. “I was thinking tonight we could—”

“I don’t know,” Mike says. He feels beaten up just saying it but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know what the fuck is happening or how to stop it now that he started it again.

Jeff isn’t smiling any more, isn’t happy with him at all. Which is good. It’s fine. This is going to be a stupid fucking fight and then they’ll be awkward with each other, like last summer, and then they’ll get past it somehow and remember they spent nine years not fucking and it went just fine.

Maybe this time Mike will be the one who goes and finds a girl just to make that perfectly clear.

“You know what guys always say about you? Other players.” Jeff twists to face him, mouth an angry flat line. “They say, man, Richards is the guy you love having on your team and hate having to play against. That Richards is such a beast.”

“That much is true,” Mike says. This would all be a lot easier if they were on the ice, dropping gloves. Maybe Jeff will finally punch him and then it will be done.

Jeff isn’t done, though. “Even Nash said it. He said, you can’t get anything past Richie if he wants what you’ve got. He’ll never stop trying. He never gives up.”

“Yeah,” Mike snaps, “I fucking get it.” Maybe five people in the world have ever seen Carts this angry, this unleashed. Mike’s never been on the receiving end of it before or maybe he’d know how to finish it.

Jeff shoves his shoulder, hard enough the couch squeaks back an inch or two. “Do you fucking want this or not? I’ve _never_ seen you walk away from something just because it got harder. I would’ve come up there for the summer. I would’ve come every fucking summer if you wanted. I fucking told you I would and you didn’t want to hear it. You were too angry. You were too betrayed by the organization. So what am I supposed to think? You must not want it. If you wanted it, you would’ve fought for it.”

“Like you fought for that fucking waitress?”

“Since when the fuck could _anyone_ else stop you from getting what you want?”

Mike looks down at his hands, clenched in fists on his thighs. He looks down at bare feet on the wood floor, at Arnold snoring half under the coffee table like this is just background noise and not what feels like the end of Mike’s fucking world.

When he finally looks up, Jeff’s gone.

+

Mike finds him up on the roof, sitting on one of the deck chairs and watching the sun set.

“Another good thing about California,” Jeff says. “I’m actually awake for this part.”

“It doesn’t suck,” Mike says, taking the chair next to Jeff. The only time he ever saw the sun come up over the shore was when they were just stumbling home. “I’m an asshole,” he says.

Jeff tugs the sleeves of his sweatshirt down and says, “Yeah, you’re not really, though.”

The wind is partially blocked by the plexiglass barriers but it’s blowing over the top and right onto their faces anyway. The burnt orange glow sinks another inch down into the horizon.

Jeff sniffs, wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “I knew the Flyers didn’t really give a shit about me,” he says. “I was never their guy.”

“It was bullshit,” Mike says.

“I just wanted one fucking person to fight for me, you know?”

Mike says, “I’m sorry I couldn’t—”

“Jesus, Mike, it was complete bullshit but you couldn’t stop that trade. Not even you.”

“I’m sorry anyway. You got screwed and I’m an asshole and I thought—you deserved better.”

“Well, now I’m in L.A.,” Jeff says.

There he goes sounding happy about it again. Mike yanks his hat down hard. “I’m not talking about L.A.”

“I know,” Jeff says. “Obviously. I figured that part out while I was up here watching this beautiful sunset. Which you get every fucking night.”

“So do you now,” he says. “Welcome to L.A.”

Jeff says, drily, “Thanks.” But then he grins at Mike anyway.

The sun slips into the water, smooth and steady, and Mike can’t breathe right for a second. He closes his eyes.

It’s just like a hard play, a rough scrum with elbows flying and sticks everywhere and all that matters is getting the puck in net. He doesn’t know how to stop trying in that moment any more than he could decide to stop breathing.

“I want this,” he says. He opens his eyes and Jeff is smiling. “I mean, assuming you want to stay.”

“Yeah,” Jeff says. “This is better.”

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler alert: [They win the Cup.](http://dazzlingheroes.tumblr.com/post/53040128501)
> 
> _“I’m just so happy,” said Richards. “This year has been amazing. We’re going to remember this forever.”_
> 
> _"A lot of people doubted me," Carter said. "I proved 'em wrong."_
> 
> [More backstory and media at my tumblr.](http://dazzlingheroes.tumblr.com) The only good explanation I can think of for why there aren’t a million Richie/Carts stories is that there are already a million articles and interviews in which professionally paid analysts wax poetic about the great tragedy that these two were ever torn apart and the great triumph that was their eventual reunion and big win. (See [this brilliant commentary, for example.) ](http://giganticism.tumblr.com/post/45929324076/1st-period-intermission-stanley-cup-final-game-4)


End file.
